The want of compassion and tenderness towards the poor, the sick, and the dying, is also so notorious, that European trallveers are frequently filled with horror at the proofs of their inhumanity, merely as they pass along the roads, or navigate the rivers, in this country.

As a Christian minister, the author hopes, that the view, given in this and the succeeding volume, of the moral and religious state of these nations, will enhance the value of Divine Revelation in the estimation of every sincere Christian. Respecting the correctness of his statements, he fears no honest and thorough investigation, if made on the spot.

It is a fact of the most cheering rature, that every examination hitherto made into the history, chronology, and religion, of pagan nations, has not only confirmed, but thrown additional light on the evidences and doctrines of the Gospel; and this has been eminently the case as it respects the Hindoo system, the last hold of the enemies of revelation ;—and thus the progress of the Truth through the world, like the path of the just, "shines more and more unto perfect day."

That mysterious subject, which has confounded the human capacity in every age, the Divine Nature, is so plainly unfolded in the Gospel, that the most unlettered christian is able to reap all the fruits of the highest knowledge, that is, to worship God in spirit and in truth; but in the Hindoo system, we have innumerable gods, all of them subject to the discordant passions, which, according to Krishnů, are the wombs of future pain.'

In that grand and most interesting concern, our acceptance with God, the Hindoo ■ystem has no one principle which can pacify the conscience, or remove the fears which a sense of guilt inspires; but the gospel supplies that hope which becomes "an anchor to the soul, both sure and stedfast."

Relative to the moral tendency of the Hindoo system, to contend for which some writers have inconsiderately entered the field of controversy, I hope the perusal of

the foregoing remarks, and of the Introduction to the Second Volume, together with an impartial examination of the many facts in different parts of the work, will set the question for ever at rest. Suffice it to say, in this place, that a few scattered passages excepted, in works never read nor heard of by the great bulk of the community, there is not a vestige of real morality in the whole of the Hindoo system; but, in its operation on the minds of millions, it adds an overwhelming force to the evil influences to which men are exposed, and raises into a horrid flame all the impure and diabolical passions which rage in the human heart.

It has been often urged, by persons to whom all religions are alike, that many nominal christians are as wicked as the Hindoos, if not far more so. This is admitted as a painful fact, and an awful proof of the depravity of human nature; but let such persons consider, that Hindooism has never made a single votary more useful, more moral, or more happy, than he would have been, if he had never known a single dogma of the shastri. It has rather done that which was charged upon the Scribes and Pharisees, Matt. xxiii. 15. The Christian Religion, on the contrary, has turned millions upon millions from vice to virtue; has made the most injurious, blessings to all, especially to their more immediate connections; has banished misery from all its sincere recipients, restored them to present happiness, and given them the hope of blessedness in a state of endless duration. These benign effects it has produced on an innumerable multitude of men, and raised many to that exalted state of moral excellence, which has made them patterns and benefactors to the whole human race. These are indisputable facts,-to which we might add, the general blessings it has diffused over the whole civilized world; which owes to the Gospel whatever it possesses above the most savage nations.-Finally, let it be further considered, that it is only necessary for Hindooism to prevail universally, and the world becomes immediately covered with darkness, without a single ray of light; with vice, without a vestige of genuine morality, and with misery, without the least mixture of rational and pure happiness. Lot Christianity, on the contrary, be universally embraced, its spirit imbibed, and its precepts obeyed, and wars will cease to the ends of the earth -ignorance and superstition will be banished-injustice and oppression removed— jails, chains, an 1 gibbets, rendered unnecessary-pure morality, flowing from the religion of the heart, will diffuse universal happiness, and earth become the vestibule of heaven.

Literature.

OF THE

HISTORY, LITERATURE, AND RELIGION OF THE HINDOOS.

THE Hindoos attribute their ancient writings to the gods; and, for the origin of the védus, they go still higher, and declare them to have been from everlasting. Though it would be unjust to withhold the palm of distinguished merit from many of their learned men, especially when we consider the early period in which they lived, yet, when compared with the writers of modern times, we are ready to pity the weakness of unassisted reason, even in individuals in whom it shone with the highest splendour.

The period when the most eminent of the Hindoo philosophers* flourished, is still involved in much obscurity; but, the apparent agreement, in many striking particulars, between the Hindoo and the Greek systems of philosophy, not only suggests the idea of some union in their origin, but strongly pleads for their belonging to one age, notwithstanding the unfathomable antiquity claimed by the Hindoos: and, after the reader shall have compared the two systems, the author is persuaded he will not consider the conjecture as improbable, that Pythagoras and others did really visit India, or, that Goutůmă and Pythagoras were contemporaries, or nearly so. If this be admitted, it will follow, that the dirshunus were written about five hundred years before the Christian æra. The védõs, we may suppose, were not written many years before the durshůnus, for Kopilă, the founder of the Sankhyŭ sect, was the grandson of Munoo, the preserver, and promulgator of the first aphorisms of the vidus; Goutě mě, the founder of the Noiyayikŭ sect, married the daughter of Brimha, the first male: and Kinadă and Putonjolce,

These persons were called Moonees, from munu, to know; and often, Gnance, or, The Wise: thus, even in the very names by which they were designated, we fnd the closest union between the Creck and Hindco philosophers. "What is now called philosophy, was," says Brucker, "in the infancy of human society, called Wisdom: the title of Wise Men was, at that t.me, frequently conferred upon persons who had little claim to such a distinction."

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